1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to wireless communication systems, and more particularly, to a phased transmit architecture that allows a polled station or mobile station to transmit a frame response within the a short turn-around time while still maintaining ample time for computation of various decisions that must be made related to the transmitted frame. The invention is particularly useful and relevant to packet based wireless local area networks such as IEEE 802.11-based networks.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Modem wireless local area networks are packet based networks designed to move data packets from one wireless station to another. Typically, modem wireless local area networks used a distributed access channel access mechanism that allows each station on the network to attempt the transmission of data without being explicitly given a transmit opportunity by any central control entity on the network. Such a scheme yields no critical timing paths, as the transmitting station can take as much time as it needs to initialize and configure itself for transmission. Such networks may require the transmission of acknowledgement packets after the successfully reception of a data packet. The generation of such an acknowledgement packet is typically done in an automatic fashion, as it is the only possible response to an incoming frame addressed to the receiving station. Thus a receiving station has only two possible responses to an incoming frame: transmit an acknowledgement frame or transmit nothing at all.